endgame
by Dr. Vamoosi
Summary: It's the first time she's ever ridden in a car. The village was always much too small to even need bicycles, and the villagers lingered in the streets so often that cars were just never brought in. Or, well - she shakes her head now, because no, it's just that what sort of robot knows how to drive? Of course there weren't cars.


It's the first time she's ever ridden in a car. The village was always much too small to even need bicycles, and the villagers lingered in the streets so often that cars were just never brought in. Or, well - she shakes her head now, because no, it's just that what sort of robot knows how to drive? Of course there weren't cars.

Their eyes are all so terribly empty. She used to think maybe she needed glasses, that was why their eyes seemed flat and stiff. She'd watch the others so _carefully_ so she could catch the twitches of their mouths and eyes. She watches them now, out the back window of the car, them all in a jumbled row and not blinking. She doesn't need glasses; she's fifty feet away and she knows their eyes aren't real.

She learned to smile from Pauly. She learned her manners from Matthew. She learned to shiver and to widen her eyes from Deke.

She shivers and she widens her eyes.

"Sir," she says, a little broken-quiet. Repeats herself loud enough to hear.

"Please, Flora," the man in the front seat says, though from her position she can just see his hat bob. "Call me Professor."

"Professor," she amends. She turns again to look out the window and they're still only fifty feet away. "They're _following_ us."

"Pardon?"

Flora gets up on her knees and presses close to the window and she can see Zappone push his heel into the dirt road when he starts to running. She can see the way all the joints lock and stutter at either extreme. She can see him never ever blink.

"Professor," she says, "Professor," she says, "Professor, _Professor_-"

"You've had a very long day, my dear," he says. "Perhaps you should take a rest while we drive."

"Professor, Professor I'm not-"

It's a small car, and slow, and hardly adapted for country roads in the first place so when the first of them barrel into its trunk it jolts forward hard, wheels skidding. The sound of metal scraping against metal as another tries to sink its fingers into Flora's door is a dissonance against her screaming. When she was very small it would sometimes rain so hard that she thought the roof was falling in, a ceaseless thud thud thudding, and it's that all over again but the sun is still coming through the windows and the force of things leaping onto the car's roof smashes dents into the ceiling. The professor is listening now, wrestling with the wheel and telling a shouting Luke to quiet down, getting the car to swerve to either edge of the road in some sort of weak attempt to swing the robot off the windshield (oh, she thinks a bit dimly, Adrea, you've always been so aggressive).

"We aren't going to make it," she says, just as Prosciutto slides off the roof and under the wheel. The car rocks, tilts off two wheels and there's a moment of ungravity that makes her stomach almost tip up through her throat but then it comes crashing down and her head smashes against the roof when they roll down into the woods surrounding the road. The car ends up on its side, all of its passengers whimpering and panting and screeching, the professor's tall hat crumpled against the windshield. She's bleeding, oh, they're all bleeding.

And the robots aren't blinking, even as they navigate down the hill to catch up. Prosciutto's lost and arm and most of his bulk and he hobbles and he doesn't blink, doesn't blink.

When the villagers all come down and they tear into Professor Layton and Luke, dismantle the car, grab her by the arms and pull her away she just screams. When they drag her off and she can hear snaps of bones and Luke's yelling cut short, she just definitely does not tell them that, well.

This is what happened last time, too.

Bruno cleans them all up to shining, he always does. Fits them with new limbs, new bodies, new heads, metal salvaged from the wreck of the car and reused for parts. Wraps bandages around her cuts and bruises and kisses her on the forehead. "Maybe next time," he says when he does, carrying her up the many many stairs. "Maybe next time they'll be the ones." He wipes her blood off his mouth and smiles to her.

She, for lack of other options, smiles back. And waits for him to blink.


End file.
